Breaking the Silence About the Cultural Revolution

It’s just over 50 years since Mao Zedong unleashed bands of radical youths to cleanse the Communist Party and Chinese society of anything deemed out of sync with his revolution. Millions perished or suffered in the rampage of cruelty, humiliation, death and destruction until Mao’s death enabled the party to shut down and eventually denounce the Cultural Revolution.

Last week, the party’s main newspaper, People’s Daily, broke a general silence about the anniversary with a commentary urging people to accept that condemnation and move on.

The Communist Party was right to reiterate that the revolution was “totally wrong in theory and practice.” There have been signs of nostalgia for Mao’s policies, including a recent gala at the Great Hall of the People that featured Cultural Revolution themes and songs. Pretending that the Communist Party, which still claims “Mao Zedong thought” as its guiding ideology, has said the last word on the revolution is wishful thinking.

The Cultural Revolution, in which perhaps a million or more people were killed, ranks among the 20th century’s convulsions of terror that have included the Stalinist terror and the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda. And, in its own class of depravity, the Holocaust. These eruptions of madness differ radically in their roots, causes, duration and effects, but they have left their societies and their surviving victims with deep traumas that can persist for generations.

No doubt there are many Chinese who would prefer to close the book and have the terrible memories go away. But the history of such bloody upheavals has shown that the only way to heal victims and society as a whole is by confronting what happened and trying to understand it. In China’s case, that would include questioning whether such a “mistake” could happen again when one party claims a monopoly on truth and power.